


since the world's been turning

by hydrochaeris



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Wingman 'Verse, if you couldn't tell by these tags this is not a very happy fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-30
Updated: 2017-01-30
Packaged: 2018-09-21 00:05:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9521903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hydrochaeris/pseuds/hydrochaeris
Summary: A flash of blue amongst the orange shivering flames. A flash of blue and a flash of noise, a yelp, a scream, a sigh, the wood shattering like glass, shards flying up out of the fire.





	

**Author's Note:**

> this deals heavily with grief and coping through a loved one’s death. it’s set in the wingman ‘verse. it’s vague in a way that some may find uncomfortable. there is ambiguous discussion of what is real and what is not, and the line between the two is not clearly defined in any way. there are strongly implied suicidal thoughts and actions. proceed with caution.

The water below is choppy and frantic, sloshing up into the crevasses of concrete slabs encasing it, but Justin’s head is steady, his heartbeat calm, collected. He leans up on the railing. Adam sits beside him.

Except that he doesn’t. Something that looks like Adam sits beside him, feet hooked together at the ankle, wings folded static and precise at the blades of his shoulders, the planes of his back. The something isn’t Adam, because Adam is loud and crass and exuberant, never able to sit still, and he has color, yellow and blue and red red red, not this gray mass here, and he doesn’t have wings. Was. Had. Didn’t.

Fuck.

“Jay,” the thing that is not Adam says, and Justin flinches. “Jay.”

“I don’t know who that is,” Justin says, quietly, to himself, because when he blinks something flickers, and nothing’s there.

-

He remembers the first time he and Adam went jogging on this bridge together. A routine. Neat. Orderly. How Justin had always lived his life.

He remembers how perfectly Adam had slid in to the role of best friend. He remembers getting their first apartment together, near the firehouse. He remembers.

A flash of blue amongst the orange shivering flames. A flash of blue and a flash of noise, a yelp, a scream, a sigh, the wood shattering like glass, shards flying up out of the fire.

The brittle tinge of metal under his tongue for the duration of the funeral. The long dragging procession. He did not speak at the funeral. Couldn’t. Just stared at the casket. Wooden. Flammable.

Ironic.

-

Justin hadn’t always been an imaginative person. His dreams were confined to what he could logically attain. It made sense that way. It felt better.

He thinks of that one night when he was home and Adam wasn’t, and so he wasn’t home at all. He thinks of how he shifted cold under his bedcovers and how he allowed his mind to wander, just that once. He thinks of how he imagined opening his heart up to Adam and letting its contents spill all disorganized over the apartment floor. How the impossible could have played out. How he could have emptied his heart and Adam could have put it back together with the simplest touch of his lips. How on their morning jog, he could have bridged the gap on the bridge between their hands. How he could have locked their fingers together, strong and clean and good. How he would have made love to Adam. How they would fit into each other and how they would still fit in the afterglow, and loved, and loved.

How Adam would have loved him back.

He stops thinking about that one night.

He stops thinking about it because it is no longer an option. The time in which he would have potentially told Adam everything has been cut out of the storyline. Folded in two and discarded quietly into the trash.

His heart shattered with the floor of the burning house. But Justin has always been good at guarding his heart.

He thinks a part of his brain shattered, too. And it’s destroying him.

-

The something that is not Adam is on his couch.

“You should watch Netflix,” the something says. “Invite that girl over. She’d watch with you.”

“I am not talking to you because you don’t exist,” Justin says. He turns on the TV. Some nature documentary is playing. It’s talking about forests. That’s nice.

The something that is not Adam sighs. Dramatically. Loudly. The way Adam would, if he were here.

He’s not.

“Just because it’s in your mind doesn’t mean it’s not real,” the something says. “If you read Harry Potter like I told you to, you’d know that.”

Justin doesn’t speak. The documentary drones on.

It’s talking about the ecosystem of the forest and how it stays alive. It’s a delicate process.

The something that is not Adam shifts on his couch and looks sideways at Justin.

“Jay,” the something says, almost desperately. “Jay, please listen to me. You gotta—you gotta get better.” Things that aren’t real can’t cry. “I think it’s why I’m here,” Adam says, and his tears fall onto the stupid old couch.

Water.

The TV screen is on fire.

The narrator of the documentary says, “Forest fires are an integral part of the success of the ecosystem. Though they seem destructive and unruly, they are actually a natural and healthy way for the forest to grow. Without forest fires, the ecosystem cannot move forward. Without decay and death, there is no potential for rebirth and life. This is the cycle.”

“Adam,” he says, and turns to the shadow of his best friend.

His heart is on his tongue. His heart is long since dead. His brain is dying too.

This is the cycle.

Adam’s wings unfurl and wrap around him. They aren’t real. None of this is real. Justin knows that he is crying but he can’t bring himself to stop. None of this is real. Adam is making gentle noises and rocking him back and forth. Adam isn’t real. Justin isn’t real. Jay is dead. The wings around him are illusions, evidence of his sickening mind. He can’t even feel them, the grayish translucent feathers on his arms and shoulders. He curls into where Adam’s chest would be. The wings tighten around him. He can’t feel them, but they do. The wings aren’t real.

It doesn’t make them any less comforting.

-

The water below is choppy and frantic. It isn’t blue like Adam’s eyes. It is blue like murk and filth fill its depths. It is blue like it is turbulent and unyielding. Adam’s eyes are the color of a clear summer sky. Today the sky is gray. Adam’s eyes are the color of the sky. Adam sits beside him on the railing. They are both facing the wrong way, over the water not the road, their legs dangling solid and sturdy even with nothing but air underneath.

Adam is not alive.

But he isn’t dead, either.

Justin is aware of his heart. He thinks of what it would be like to tell Adam everything he wants them to be, not the old Adam, but this Adam. This something that isn’t quite Adam because Adam was human.

If he believed in them, he’d say this Adam is a ghost.

Justin is aware of his heart. He thinks of what it would be like to tell this Adam all the hopes he had for them. How they are all still there, foolish and trembling.

He looks at this Adam and this Adam looks back at him. His eyes are see-through. His eyes are gray. When Justin blinks, this Adam fuzzes in and out of sight. He wants to tell Adam that he loves him. That he loved him.

That he loves him.

This Adam looks at him and puts a hand that he cannot feel on top of Justin’s. He says, soft in a way Adam never was, “Jay.”

He would tell this Adam that he loves Adam, except he thinks this Adam already knows.

There is water so close below them. And somewhere, invisible amongst the clouds, there is fire so far above them.

Jay closes his eyes and begins.

 

**Author's Note:**

> the title is from billy joel's 'we didn't start the fire,' which does not fit this fic tonally at all bc i just really wanted a title from a song about fire. honestly i don't know where this came from and it's very disorganized but like, so is ransom's thought process and headspace, so i guess *nursey voice* it's a metaphor, yo.  
> 
> 
>   
> [main](http://yeahbees.tumblr.com) || [omgcp sideblog](http://wholsomholsom.tumblr.com) || [reblog here](http://wholsomholsom.tumblr.com/post/156595752536/since-the-worlds-been-turning)  
> 


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